Brake pads EBC or Hawk Performance
For last Autox season I used the factory calipers. Hawk blue pads, motul brake fluid. Had no issues at all.
If you are looking for high performance, I can vouch for EBC Yellowstuff and Bluestuff NDX. Yellowstuff is a good high performance street pad. no noise even in cold including down to -29 deg C. There is some squeal if the car has sat in the rain the first time you touch the brake pedal but its quiet after. the pads have really strong bite and sustain heat fairly well but wear down rather quickly if you are doing track days. mine lasted 20,000 kms including 6 track days and 4 autoX events. under road driving conditions only, they last much longer. If you want something to last longer and be better suited for track but still be streetable, Bluestuff NDX will do that. they have similar bite to Yellowstuff but sustain higher temperatures and last longer.
I autocross a bit and went with Hawk rotors and pads from Tirerack after a bit of mulling it over. Overall fairly happy with them, a little dusty but have NEVER faded while on them hard. Put maybe a hard 5k miles on them so far.
edit- I do have a 1.8 and as mentioned at least once you should consider getting the 1.8's calipers.
I like EBC greenstuff. No louder than stock, good cold bite, and a little better heat resistance. Good for autocross and street, but they won't hold up on the track. And they don't produce a huge amount of dust, though it is more than oem.
I run hawk hps pads on my NA. They've held up to entry level track work and not made much noise on the street. Feel fine when I choose to drive the Miata to work.
EBC Reds. I would check the rotors though, because if your pads are thin there’s a very good chance the rotors will need replacing too. In which case you may as well go Zimmerman rotors and EBC reds.
Just switched from Stoptech street pads + stoptech drilled and slotted rotors to zimmerman cross drilled rotors with hawk hps5.0 pads. Must say I like my Zimmerman + Hawk setup a lot.
Closing the loop (sorry this is a bit long): the EBC Bluestuffs (eventually) performed super well for me at the HPDE this past weekend. I did have some noticeable shudder - but never any fade - develop after several laps during my Saturday morning sessions, but this went away as the brakes cooled and would not immediately be present at the begining of the following session, only reappearing once things got good and hot. I could not replicate it on the road during the Saturday lunch lull nor overnight. On Sunday the shudder was back only slightly during the morning's first session but by the second session had completely disappeared. After talking it through with several others that I trust, I'm content to chalk the shudder up to deposits on the rotors/not having changed nor prepped the rotors before installing the new pads. I'll not do it that way again. They definitely dust like crazy, but they were both responsive and predictible on track while being super well behaved on the street (so much so that I may just run them all the time). Even in my last session of the weekend, 17 laps of Summit Point main, I never had any doubt whatsoever about them performing for me heading into turn one. That sentence is about as good a review as I could give.
I have ebc reds. I still get lots of brake dust and I prefer the bite of oem pads more. Not to say reds are bad, they just didn't meet my expectations for a daily.
If you’re going to run lap after lap they don’t hold up.
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